Addiction takes first place. Once a person is in it, ordinary life gets obstructed around the thing, and the thing is what comes first in the day. For a gambler, gambling is first in line. Drugs cost a great deal of money, and raising that money is how a user ends up a dealer — he needs money to use, so eventually he sells. That is how the vicious circle closes on itself.
There is a question that arrives before any of the rest: is addiction a sin or an illness? You can hold both at once. What follows looks at the mind of the person who becomes addicted without passing a verdict on him. Not everyone becomes addicted, after all.
There are a great many kinds. The government in Korea designates four major addictions: alcohol, drugs, gambling, gaming — roughly that list. Sex addiction is widespread. There is exercise addiction, and there is book addiction — reading too much of the time.
Underneath all of them, becoming addicted is avoiding reality. Running from it. Book addiction sounds like the harmless kind, but the reader stops being able to run his own day. People do ask whether some addictions aren’t good ones. There are no good addictions.
“Because it’s fun,” or “I just do it”
At the beginning it is good, it is fun, it is comfortable. That holds whichever substance got picked. Take gaming. To an adult eye every child looks like a gaming addict; with children in the house you hear yourself saying he plays far too much, he’s addicted to that game (When a Child Stops Listening, You Should Be Clapping).
Serious gaming addiction, or a child who simply likes games and plays a lot of them — the difference comes out roughly if you ask. Ask a child, ask a young adult. “Because it’s fun.” That one is not an addict. “I just do it.” That one can be read as addiction.
The deeper gaming addiction runs, the less the playing is about wanting to play. It is done because playing brings the mind a certain amount of peace. Not because it is fun.
Take a blow while drunk and it doesn’t hurt
Alcohol works the same way. Drink, and the body’s sensation goes numb. Take a blow while drunk and it doesn’t hurt, because the sense has been deadened.
Sit at a game and you lose track of the hours. Every five years or so a news item comes around about someone who died of malnutrition while gaming. The body is supposed to report hunger. The sense is numbed, so the nutrition drains out of him and the hunger signal never reaches him as a sensation. Gaming numbed that sense.
Self-destruction on the mind’s side, numbness on the body’s
So read addiction psychologically and it carries an aim of self-destruction; read it physically and it numbs the person’s own senses. That is a purpose as well. It means the thing has a purposefulness in it that wrecks the person’s own life.
For pain in the body we take a painkiller
When something hurts in the body, what do we take? A painkiller. A cold, an ache somewhere — a painkiller, and the pain settles down. Pain in the body, painkiller.
Then what is there for pain in the mind?
Some people answer that they pray. People with faith say that prayer is where they receive comfort and strength from God.
But look steadily at what is actually there. People who believe in Jesus get depression. Among people who believe in Jesus there are a great many addicts. Among believers there are a great many with disorders of anger. Every one of those is a sign that there is pain in the mind.
So why does someone who believes in Jesus, who believes in God, not get comfort and consolation and strength from God? That is the point where the difficulty begins, and it is a serious one to sit with. It stays what it was at the start — a look without a verdict.
The rescue gets looked for outside
The mood goes grey, so you go out and start shopping. And that is how a shopping addict gets made. Look at it closely and addiction is the act of looking outside for the rescue that would settle the pain inside. The pain is in the mind, and the solution is hunted for outside. A child is giving you grief, so you have a drink (Not Completely Released. Just Soothed Again.).
They don’t know they are tense
Most people have heard of propofol. Part of what addiction offers is a painkilling effect, and drugs of that sort in particular slacken the body.
And the people who are going to become addicts are tense all the time. The shoulders are always holding something. They don’t know they are tense, so they live every ordinary day that way. Then comes the drink, or the drug, or some behaviour, and it lets go. Oh — comfortable. Oh — that’s all right. Something here is putting me at ease.
For pain in the body there is a painkiller. For pain in the mind, what is there? The question does not close here. But there is one question that can be set down in front of it first. Am I doing this because it’s fun, or do I just do it?
Related
- Free-Floating Anxiety: Why Limits Make You Feel Safer, Not Smaller
- All I Could Talk About Was Last Night’s Episode
- The Self-Prescription: What You’ve Been Taking Every Day
Written by Kim Hyung-keun — Director, Seoul Addiction Psychology Institute · Director, Institute for Contemporary Psychoanalysis · Object relations psychotherapist and supervisor, 26 years in practice and teaching. Counselling Board